Re: [BULK] - Global warming problems in homeschool text

By the way, what textbook is the homeschool group using? I'd be interested
to know because I'm doing a lot of research into textbook options for
junior high school right now.

I suspect that the survey of scientist referred to in the textbook was from
a Wall Street Journal article or some other similar source like that. I
seem to recall that there was several such reports discussed in newpapers
about 5 years ago. The temperature data can probably be found in a college
environmental science book such as the one by G.Tyler Miller.

I think that for global warming and ozone depletion, data like the
temperature graphs are misleading; those data were just the initial
observations that gave rise to the hypotheses scientists tested with
models, etc. The real support for the global warming and ozone depletion
are the data based on models and simulations of chemistries of the
atmosphere. Unfortunately, those data get kind of complicated for junior
highers (high school and nonscience college students, too) to understand.
Nevertheless, I think that there is much to be gained by presenting the
temperature data as the initial observation, not the confirming results.
Certainly students can see that we alter our chemical environment in
significantly different ways than ever before in history; by extension,
they should be able to to appreciate that we can make pretty good models
of chemicals reactions and equilibria based on extending that human use out
into the future. Even if the global warming and ozone depletion concerns
are not born out with as much severity as some suggest, any student should
be able to appreciate the wisdom of doing our best to think about the
future consequences of current "stewardship" practices.

Actually, it is kind of weird that Christians (especially YECs) don't
embrace these doomsday theories. You would expect most of them to latch
onto any theory that predicted a final destruction of earth as a result of
man's depravity as part of God's final judgment and culmination of time.
That was the reasoning for most of the Christian hype regarding Y2K.

I have been asked to teach a junior high physical science class for a
homeschool group. In addition to a few unsound young-earth related
claims, for which I already know some of the background, global warming
is dismissed in the textbook as agenda-based. The evidence consists of
a graph purporting to show global temperatures leveling out (with high
variability) in the last few decades after a rise before that and a
survey that claimed that a slight majority of atmospheric scientists
did not think global warming was a problem, with the next largest group
answering that we don't know. Does anyone know what data the
temperature graph might be based on or the details of the survey?

----------------------------------------
Dr. David Campbell
425 Scientific Collections
University of Alabama, Box 870345
Tuscaloosa AL 35487
"James gave the huffle of a snail in
danger But no one heard him at all" A.
A. Milne
Received on Wed Aug 17 17:38:18 2005